05 Sep 2025

AI News Digest

🤖 AI-curated 6 stories

Today's Summary

ProRata.ai just snagged $40 million to roll out Gist Answers, an AI search tool that lets publishers control and monetize their content, standing out as a nifty solution for the AI scraping dilemma. Meanwhile, OpenAI might be getting its hands dirty with its own AI chip production by 2026 alongside Broadcom, a move that could shake up the current reliance on big names like Nvidia. Over in the education world, the White House’s ‘Presidential AI Challenge’ is pushing AI into classrooms, with tech giants like Google and IBM pledging to train millions, sparking both excitement and concerns over tech’s growing influence in education.

Stories

ProRata.ai raises $40M and launches Gist Answers — an AI search product for publishers

Generative AI startup ProRata.ai announced a $40 million Series B and the launch of Gist Answers, an embeddable AI search tool that lets publishers provide AI-generated summaries and recommendations based on their own content (or content from ProRata’s 750-publisher network). The product pairs a 50/50 revenue‑share licensing model with publisher attribution, positioning the company as an infrastructure play to help publishers get paid and regain control over how their content is used by AI systems. The funding will be used to expand the team and accelerate distribution — a timely offering as publishers push back on scraping and seek new monetization paths in the generative‑AI era.

OpenAI reported to be building its first in‑house AI chip with Broadcom for 2026

Reuters reports—citing the Financial Times—that OpenAI is planning to produce its first custom AI chip in 2026 in partnership with Broadcom (with fabrication reportedly at TSMC). The chip is said to be for OpenAI’s internal use to reduce reliance on third‑party suppliers like Nvidia and to control costs and capacity for large model training and inference. If confirmed, this follows a broader industry trend of big AI players developing bespoke silicon and could materially change infrastructure dynamics and vendor negotiations across the AI compute market.

ProRata.ai pulls in $40M Series B and launches 'Gist Answers' to sell AI search to publishers

Generative-AI startup ProRata.ai announced a $40 million Series B (reported Sept. 5, 2025) to fund a new product, Gist Answers — an embeddable AI search/summarization tool that lets publishers serve AI-generated answers from their own paywalled content (and a network of ~750 publishers). The raise (led by Touring Capital, per reporting) and product push aim to create a monetization alternative to large-model content scraping by routing user queries and payments through publishers’ properties. Industry impact: the deal highlights a growing trend of startups building publisher-aligned AI infrastructure and commercial models that try to redirect AI value back to content owners; it could accelerate publisher adoption of first-party AI search and set a template for revenue-sharing with LLMs.

C3.ai names Stephen Ehikian CEO as revenue slides, prompting investor jitters

Enterprise-AI vendor C3.ai announced a leadership change (effective Sept. 1, 2025) appointing Stephen Ehikian as CEO while founder Thomas Siebel moves to executive chairman; the move accompanied fiscal Q1 results showing revenue down year‑over‑year ($70.3M) and the company withdrawing prior guidance. The leadership swap and weak results triggered stock declines and signal a critical inflection for a well-known enterprise-AI player: new leadership with federal procurement experience could refocus product and sales strategy, but investors and customers will watch closely for signs C3 can regain growth amid tougher enterprise buying and competition in AI tooling.

ProRata.ai raises $40M and launches Gist Answers — an AI search/widget publishers can embed

Generative-AI startup ProRata.ai announced a $40M Series B and the launch of Gist Answers, a plug-in AI search/summary widget publishers can embed on their sites. The product generates AI summaries and recommendations based on a publisher’s own content (or content from ProRata’s 750‑publisher network) and shares revenue with participating publishers under a 50/50 model. The move targets the ongoing dispute over AI models scraping journalism and aims to give publishers a way to monetize and control AI-driven discovery of their work — a practical tool for publishers and newsrooms to both surface content and capture value from AI usage.

White House’s 'Presidential AI Challenge' pushes AI tools and training into schools — big pledges from tech groups

At a White House event launching the 'Presidential AI Challenge', tech firms and education groups pledged major training and tool commitments to bring AI into K–12 classrooms. Companies including Google, IBM and Microsoft pledged expanded access to tools and free AI trainings; Code.org said it would engage 25 million learners, and IBM pledged training for 2 million workers. The initiative signals large-scale distribution of AI learning resources and classroom tooling, while prompting debate about student safety, oversight and the role of big tech in education policy. For educators and learners, this could mean increased access to AI curricula, platforms and trainings — but also renewed scrutiny over implementation, safety and accountability.